from the how-this-works dept

Earlier this year, we noted that government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton had been making the rounds ringing up the moral panic over "cyberterrorism," without any significant evidence of it actually existing in any real form. The key to all of this was the hiring of former director of national intelligence Michael McConnell as a VP, whose main job seems to be scaring the press into repeating Booz Allen fear mongering talking points and attributing them to him without even bothering to mention that he's employed by a company that is making a ton of money from this fear mongering. And, boy, has Booz Allen raked in the money. Since the fear mongering began, the firm has secured at least hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts.

Of course, that's good for the firm, but what about its investors? Well, now that it's scared the government and the public into handing over all this cash, it looks like its investors want to cash out. The company has now announced plans for an IPO so they can walk off with the cash, built off of scaring the public over a supposed threat for which they have little actual evidence. What a deal!

from the calm-down dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting various stories, like this one sent in by cc, saying that Senator Joe Lieberman is trying to give Obama an internet kill switch. We didn't cover it because it's quite exaggerated. We actually had already covered the new legislation in a post a couple weeks ago, and while we disagree both with the legislation and the need for such legislation, exaggerating what it's about does no one any good. However, it does seem that all of the negative publicity has Lieberman quickly trying to clarify what the bill really means and make it clear that it does not actually give the federal government any sort of "kill switch." The idea is just that, if there actually is an attack from a certain country, there's more of a coordinated plan to reroute traffic.